slab

Noun

1. A large, flat piece of solid material; a solid object that is large and flat.
2. A paving stone; a flagstone.
3. (Australia) A carton containing 24 cans (chiefly of beer).
4. An outside piece taken from a log or timber when sawing it into boards, planks, etc.
5. The slack part of a sail.
6. (US, slang) A large, luxury pre-1980 General Motors vehicle, particularly a Buick, Oldsmobile, or Cadillac.
7. A very large wave.
8. The amount by which a cache can grow or shrink, used in memory allocation.
9. Part of a tectonic plate that is being, or has been, subducted.
10. A poured-concrete foundation for a building.
11. A region between two parallel lines in the Euclidean plane, or between two parallel planes in three-dimensional Euclidean space, or between two hyperplanes in higher dimensions.
12. A flat, sealed plastic case that encloses a flat collector's item, such as a coin or a trading card.

Verb

1. (transitive) To make into a slab.
2. (informal, transitive) To destroy (a structure) so completely as to leave only the foundation slab visible.

Adj

Thick; viscous.

Pronounced as (IPA)

/slæb/

Etymology

Inherited from Middle English: sclabbe

Cognate with Norwegian: sleip

Cognate with Icelandic: sleipur

Cognate with Irish: slaib

Cognate with English: slop

In summary

From Middle English sclabbe, slabbe, of uncertain origin; possibly from *slap, related to dialectal slappel (“portion, piece”), along with slape (“slippery”), sleip (“smooth piece of timber”), borrowed through Old Norse sleipr from Proto-Germanic *slaipaz, from Proto-Indo-European *(s)leyb-. See also Norwegian sleip (“slippery”) and Icelandic sleipur.

Synonyms

plate

plank

board

flagstone

slice

tablet

sheet

flat stone

plaque

panel

piece

pane

block

cake

🍰

tile

spindle

chunk

bit

hardhead

hunch

lath

leaf

lithography

loggerhead

mat

memorial tablet

mire

monotony

mortar

mud

ooze

pack

particle

pile

portion

puddle

puke

ribbon

🎀

scale

screed

segment

silt

slate

slime

slosh

sludge

stack

stave

stone

🪨

thickhead

Translations

Platte

lastra

dalle

plaque

piastra

tablet

plak

πλάκα

laje

plaat

plancha

Scheibe

tabla

chapa

lámina

Sentences

The slab was hewn from heavy blocks of slate .